Requiem for a gerserker - Gordon's Laws of Geekery

It is hard to remember a time before the Man-machine war. Things were bad in the TSR years, and yet again when QEMM laid waste to the minds of men. Strong warriors weep to remember when Mac OS 7 crumbled before TCP/IP, or the Hell that was Hayes. We hoped for peace with OS/2, but got Me instead.

Yet we won those battles. The machines seemed chastened. Windows 2000 was peaceful. Modems died. OS X 10.3 was good. We thought a world of true productivity lay ahead.

It's not only that the machines are becoming ever more powerfully complex. We of the first generation are growing weary. Many comrades have retired from the front. We can't weave and dodge as in the days before bifocals. Exercise, sleep, work and ... yes ... family -- they take their toll.

Fear that which is beyond the hand of the Geek, such as networked data that cannot be copied locally. Above all, fear the services of those foreign domains that lack an effective and responsive Help Desk.

Embrace redundancy.

Simplify, even at the cost of power.

Pace technology. Take on new battles only when the supply lines are strong and the forces are rested.

It's a new world for me. It means I don't want a 10.6 iMac -- instead I'll buy a 10.5 iMac once the 10.6 "up to date" program is announced. I doubt I'll do 10.6 before 2012.

I'm putting off my new SLR purchase, partly because Canon has gone mad, but mostly because those images are too large for old G5. I will need to get a new iMac completely pacified before I take on new camera. The SLR will move into 2010.

I'm going to get the new iPhone -- but not at the same time as the new iMac. They'll have to be spaced.

At work I'll drastically reduce my participation in anything new beyond the absolutely essential.

In the fearsome Cloud I'll be stay closer to Google -- the Demon I ride -- and avoid the complications of distributed authentication and extended identity.

Only Minnesotans and other Scandinoovians will "get" the gerserker reference, and you returning on your shield.....as a fellow norsker, I hope NOT to be put out to sea and set alight any time soon. Yes, bi-focals suck. Mousing is harder. Hell, everything is either harder to do or impossible to do........but we shall carry on, albeit, slowly. All hail Gordon!